How the Brain Lost Its Mind: Sex, Hysteria, and the Riddle of Mental Illness

A noted neurologist challenges the widespread misunderstanding of brain disease and mental illness.

How the Brain Lost Its Mind tells the rich and compelling story of two confounding ailments, syphilis and hysteria, and the extraordinary efforts to confront their effects on mental life. How does the mind work? Where does madness lie, in the brain or in the mind? How should it be treated?

Throughout the nineteenth century, syphilis—a disease of mad poets, musicians, and artists—swept through t...